


The World's a Beast of a Burden

by camwolfe



Series: It's Easier, It's Kinder [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Depression, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:50:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camwolfe/pseuds/camwolfe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is falling apart, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I might as well have called this "Steve's life is terrible and everything is awful" because, well. That's what it's going to be. Please pay attention to the tags, and feel free to tell me if there's something I missed while tagging! I'll probably end up adding more with each chapter tbh. I DID say everything would be terrible. The angst tag is back I'M SORRY. 
> 
> This starts with Sam POV, but that'll be changing after a while. STAY TUNED.
> 
> Title from "What the Water Gave Me" by Florence + The Machine.

“Nope. I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, come on,” Sam protested. “Why don’t you believe me?”

Carmen rolled her eyes. “You seriously expect me to believe that you met Captain America while you were jogging, and now the two of you are best buds?”

“Yes,” Sam said.

Carmen crossed her arms, but she was smiling. “Fine. Prove it.”

“Fine,” Sam said. “He usually comes to my Thursday three o’clock group. Sometimes. Occasionally. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, he mostly shows up halfway through and then sneaks in,” Sam admitted. “And then just sits in the back silently until it ends.”

“Well,” Carmen said thoughtfully. “That’s better than nothing.”

Sam sighed. “I guess.”

Carmen pulled out her phone and started flipping through the calendar in it. “My last appointment is at three tomorrow. I’ll meet you outside?”

“Sure,” Sam said. “I’ll make Steve hang around after so you can meet him.”

Carmen narrowed her eyes as she slung her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. “I’ll hold you to that, Wilson!”

Sam grinned at the door long after it had swung shut.

Carmen Martinez was Sam’s age, but she was already a prominent psychiatrist down at the hospital. She worked at the VA two afternoons a week, offering pro-bono appointments to those who couldn’t afford it. Sam had seen a huge difference in a lot of the vets during the two months that Carmen had been there.

They’d been on a few dates so far. Nothing too serious, just a few trips to Starbucks and a quick stop for dinner after work. They’d spent a fair amount of time together though, working on some programs they wanted to start at the VA. Sam was pretty excited about it. About the programs, and about Carmen.

She also had a three year old daughter named Cecily, whose favourite superhero was Captain America. Sam was kind of hoping to score bonus points with both Carmen and Cecily by introducing them to Steve.

 

To Sam’s relief, Steve _did_ actually show up to the group the next day. He came in late, just like he always did, and took a seat in the back of the room silently.

Sam tried not to wince when he finally got a good look at him. Steve looked… well, he looked terrible. Not that Sam would say that to his face. Actually, no, he might say that to Steve’s face.

Steve’s shoulders were hunched, and he seemed to almost curl in on himself as he sat on the uncomfortable metal folding chair. His skin was sallow, and the dark circles under his eyes were almost as bad as they’d been when he and Sam were in Russia. His clothes looked clean, at least, but the plain sweater and jeans he was wearing didn’t make it look like he’d really put a lot of effort into his appearance.

Sam sighed again.

When the group finished, Sam made a beeline for Steve. Sometimes Steve ducked out the back door before Sam would even get a chance to talk with him.

“Hey,” Sam said cheerfully. “Wanna help me fold up these chairs? I’ve got to get this room cleaned up before I can leave tonight.”

“Of course, Sam,” Steve said with a smile. It didn’t reach his eyes.

With Steve’s help, they got the chairs and tables folded up and packed away in what was probably record time. Sam said goodbye to all the other group members as they got their stuff and left, leaving him and Steve alone in the room.

“So, remember that woman I told you about?” Sam said, shoving one of the stacks of chairs into the corner of the room.

“The psychiatrist?” Steve asked. He finished stacking the rest of the chairs.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “She – “

He glanced behind him as the door opened, and Carmen walked in.

“Speak of the devil,” Sam said with a grin.

Carmen rolled her eyes. “Rude.”

Sam laughed. “Steve, this is Carmen. Carmen, this is Steve.”

“Nice to meet you,” Steve said politely. He held out his hand.

Carmen had her phone in one hand, and she only glanced up at Steve as she went to shake his hand.

“Nice to meet – “ she started, and then her eyes widened. “Oh.”

Sam couldn’t help it. He laughed.

Carmen scowled at him, finally letting Steve’s hand go. “Don’t laugh at me, Wilson!”

Sam ignored her and continued to laugh. “It was funny! I’ve never seen you lost for words before.”

“I’m not lost for words,” Carmen protested. She turned back to Steve, who was watching them with a small smile. “It’s great to meet you, Steve. Sam’s told me a lot about you. Would it be rude of me to ask you for an autograph? My daughter is a huge fan of yours.”

“I’d be happy to,” Steve said. Carmen smiled and grabbed a notebook and pen from her bag, handing it to Steve.

“What’s her name?” Steve asked, already starting to write.

“Cecily.”

Steve finished, and handed the notebook back to her. “You guys heading out for the evening?”

“We’re going for dinner at that new pizza place down the street,” Carmen said.

“Oh, I heard its good,” Steve said distractedly as he followed them out of the building. He was looking at something on his phone.

“Want to come with us?” Sam asked.

“What?” Steve asked, looking up. He glanced between the two of them. “Oh, no. Thank you.”

“Come on,” Sam insisted. “When was the last time you actually ate a meal? And I’m not counting a bag of chips that you bought from the corner store as a meal.”

Steve frowned at him.

“This autograph is going to absolutely make my daughter’s day,” Carmen said. “The least I can do is buy you dinner.”

“It’s really fine,” Steve tried.

“Not taking no for an answer!” Sam said over his shoulder as he led the way out of the building and down the street.

 

The restaurant exclusively had booths instead of tables, and they ended up squished in one in the corner. Sam and Carmen sat next to each other, leaving Steve to sit by himself on the other side of the table.

Carmen managed to keep the conversation going. It still ended up being mostly her talking to Sam, though. Sam kept trying to include Steve in the conversation, but Steve would just answer the question and go back to staring out the window.

At least he ate the food when it finally came. He wolfed down his pizza in half the time that it took Sam and Carmen to finish theirs.

“So, Steve,” Carmen said as she picked up another piece of pizza. “What have you been up to lately? Now that you’re back from travelling with Sam?”

Steve, who was staring out the window again, didn’t seem to hear her.

“Steve,” Sam prompted.

Steve blinked. “Sorry. Uh, not much, really. I don’t have a lot to do.”

“No more aliens dropping out of the sky?” Carmen asked.

“Not that I know of,” Steve said.

The conversation continued, and Steve turned to look out the window again. Occasionally he’d pull his phone out and stare at it for a while, even though Sam doubted he was getting any texts.

Finally, they finished eating and left the restaurant. Steve ducked up to the register before either Sam or Carmen could, and paid for their entire bill despite their protests.

“Thanks for dinner, guys,” Steve said once they were back outside.

“No, thank you!” Carmen protested. “You paid for it!”

Steve shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“We’ll get the next one,” Carmen said firmly.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Um, I should probably get going. It was nice to meet you, Carmen. Nice to see you, Sam.”

He turned and started walking.

“Steve!” Sam called. “Hey, man! Are we gonna start back up running this week?”

Steve paused. “Uh, maybe. I’ll call you.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Will you, though?”

“Of course,” Steve lied unconvincingly. “See you guys later.”

Sam and Carmen watched him go.

Carmen was frowning. “Is he okay?”

“No,” Sam said.


	2. Chapter 2

THREE MONTHS EARLIER

 

They left Washington three weeks after the fall of SHIELD. Steve finally got the all clear from his doctors, although it was Sam’s personal opinion that Steve was probably not ready.

Physically, he was fine. Steve had recovered from his injuries more quickly than even Sam had believed possible. He was already back on his feet, scouring Washington day in and day out for any sign of the Winter Soldier. Sam tagged along, keeping up with Steve’s obsessive energy as best he could.

They found absolutely nothing. There was no sign of Barnes/The Winter Soldier/Whoever-He-Was-Now for weeks, until Steve got a phone call from Tony Stark. Apparently his AI had found footage of Barnes boarding a plane bound for Frankfurt. Steve called Sam in a panic, and the two of them caught the next flight out.

Since then, they’d been following Barnes across Europe. Sam had thrown around the words ‘wild goose chase’ and ‘unproductive’ a few times, but Steve refused to hear it.

Barnes would pop up in a random country for a day or two and murder someone. He wasn’t particularly subtle about it, which is how Steve and Sam would find out. Inevitably there would be a wife or son or someone wailing about how a man with a metal arm had murdered their husband or father in the middle of the night.

Steve would always get this hopeful look on his face, and they’d spend the next few days running around the city trying to pin down where Barnes might be.

A month after they’d initially starting searching, even Steve had to admit that they’d reached a dead end.

Barnes had, as best they could tell, been moving around Italy for a few days. He was staying just ahead of Steve and Sam, and the unpredictability of his movements wasn’t making it any easier. They managed to get a hold of some security footage from the airport, just in time to see Barnes board a plane for Russia. They tracked him there, but he vanished outside of Moscow.

“He looks okay, at least,” Sam said. They were sitting in their hotel room, watching the security footage on Steve’s laptop for the hundredth time.

“He’s too skinny,” Steve said. He leaned closer to the screen, as if that would help him see Barnes more clearly.

“Well, yeah, but he’s not starving at least,” Sam tried. “He’s probably not eating all that well, but it looks like he’s eating _something_ at least.”

“We could try searching the other hotels,” Steve said.

Sam groaned and flopped back onto the creaky bed. “Every other hotel in Moscow? Are you serious?”

Steve sighed and rewound the footage. “Got any better suggestions?”

“Yes,” Sam said. He grabbed a musty pillow and dropped it over his face. “We wait until he pops up again and murders someone, and then we go from there. Like always.”

“That could be days from now,” Steve said desperately. “And there’s a lot of people in this city. I mean, we can look back through the files to see if any former Hydra agents are living here now – “

“He’ll find them before we do,” Sam said. “He always does.”

Steve started watching the footage again. “Okay, Sam. Fine. What do we do in the meantime, then?”

Sam sat up again, letting the pillow fall into his lap. “We go get some dinner, and then we come back here and sleep until I’m not jetlagged anymore.”

“That seems so…” Steve said slowly. “Useless.”

“Taking care of ourselves is not useless,” Sam said firmly. “Are you really going to make me launch into this lecture again?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “I could probably recite it back to you at this point.”

“Well then,” Sam said. “Start reciting.”

He got to his feet and grabbed his wallet, pointedly opening their hotel room door and waiting. Steve reluctantly shut the laptop and followed him out into the hallway.

Sam talked a lot of shit, but Steve was actually pretty regimented at trying to take care of himself. Trying was the operative word there, though. Steve was burning out faster than Sam had ever seen anyone do. It was almost kind of impressive.

Steve insisted that they get a minimum of five hours of sleep a night. Sam would have preferred at least eight, but he’d take what he could get. Sam was so exhausted from all the travelling that he was usually asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Steve sometimes laid awake all night. Sam would occasionally open his eyes blearily, and see Steve lying in the darkness in the bed beside his, staring blankly at the ceiling. Sometimes he got up and paced around the room silently, trying not to wake Sam up. If Sam had to hazard a guess, he would say that Steve was probably only sleeping for around two hours a night. It was hard to watch Steve suffer like this, and it was only getting worse.

 

The truth of the matter was that Barnes was gone.

Three days after their arrival in Moscow, the trail went cold and stayed like that.

Steve, of course, kept trying. Every morning he’d get up and drag Sam out into the city again. They searched everywhere that Steve could think of to look, including various Hydra outposts and the homes of prominent Hydra officials.

Wherever Barnes had gone, and whatever he was doing, it was definitely off the radar. It crossed Sam’s mind a few times that Barnes could have died, hence the disappearance, but he knew better than to mention that to Steve.

Sam knew they were done, at least for now. He was pretty sure that Steve did too, but he still stubbornly refused to admit it.

Sam crashed into bed two weeks later in their shitty Moscow hotel room, nearly sound asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. They’d been out walking around the city again that day, and he was pretty sure he was more tired than he’d ever been in his entire life.

Steve lay down in the bed next to him, a little more slowly. Sam drifted into sleep as Steve reached over and turned the weak bedside lamp off.

 

Sam woke up some time later to the distinct sound of someone having a panic attack.

“Shit,” Sam muttered, his face still buried in his pillow. He scrambled out of bed, frantically trying to disentangle his legs from the sheets.

He stumbled through the dark hotel room, tripping over his backpack in the process. He knocked on the firmly closed washroom door.

“Steve?” he called.

There was no reply, other than the continued sound of Steve gasping for breath. Sam sighed and pushed the door open.

Steve was sitting on the floor of the washroom, his back against the bathtub. His head was in his hands, his face hidden. His entire body was shaking, and his chest heaved with every desperate breath.

“Hey,” Sam said carefully. He knelt down next to Steve on the floor, careful not to touch him. “Hey, Steve.”

Steve didn’t respond, his hands still fisted in his hair.

“Steve, do you know what’s happening to you right now?”

Steve continued to gasp for breath. Sam wasn’t entirely sure that Steve even knew he was there.

“Well, I’m going to tell you, just in case,” Sam continued. “I think you’re having a panic attack, Steve. I know that you feel like you aren’t getting enough air, but you definitely are.”

Steve finally shook his head slightly.

“I can’t…” he gasped out. “I can’t… breathe…”

“Yes, you can,” Sam said firmly. “Trust me on this one, Steve. You can breathe. I need you to try and slow your breathing a little, okay?”

“I can’t,” Steve repeated.

“You absolutely can,” Sam said. “Okay, ready? Take a deeper breath in.”

After several minutes of Sam coaching Steve through his breathing, Steve finally started to calm down. He was still shaking and his breathing occasionally hitched, but his breathing seemed to have returned to normal.

Sam got up and went back into the room. He grabbed a water bottle and headed back into the washroom, sitting down on the floor again.

“Here,” he said. Steve took the water bottle with a trembling hand. He drank half of it down in one go.

“This ever happened before?” Sam asked. The colour was slowly returning to Steve’s face.

Steve shook his head. “Not… not like this. Not this bad.”

Sam sighed. He leaned back against the grimy wall. “Steve…”

“I know,” Steve mumbled. “We’re done. I know.”

“I’m not saying we give up,” Sam said. “I know you’d never do that, and I don’t _want_ you to do that. And you know I’m here for as long as you need me. But you need a break.”

Steve finally lifted his head. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said hopelessly.

“Barnes clearly doesn’t want to be found,” Sam said. “You can’t help him if he doesn’t want to be helped.”

“Yeah,” Steve said listlessly.

“Let’s go home,” Sam said. “Get some sleep, eat some food that we can actually pronounce the names of. Take a shower in a washroom that isn’t slimy. When Barnes is done doing… whatever it is he’s doing, you’ll be there.”

“Okay,” Steve said, his voice hollow.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The dull overhead light flickered. Sam watched a spider make its slow way down the wall. The sink continued to drip slowly and steadily.

“Come on,” Sam said gently. He got to his feet, wincing as his joints complained. “Let’s try and get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Steve said again. He followed Sam back out into the room. Sam flopped back down on his bed, closing his eyes.

He didn’t sleep that night, and he didn’t think Steve did either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENTS AND KUDOS SO FAR WOW I LOVE YOU ALL
> 
> I'm on tumblr [here](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com)!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a brief mention of suicide and lots of talk about depression, so please be careful if that'll be a problem for you.

They got back home to the States, parted ways at the airport, and Sam didn’t see Steve again for two weeks.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Sam spent a few days just lazing around his apartment, getting his breath back after months of travel. He texted Steve on the third day, and didn’t get a response until two days after that. Steve’s text was a vague affirmation that he was fine, and the lack of effort that Steve had put into it made Sam frown. He tried calling Steve's phone the next day, and then the day after that.

Maybe Steve just needed some space. Hell, Steve and Sam had been living out of each other’s pockets for _months._ The dude probably just needed some time to himself.

At the two-week mark, Sam gave up and went to Steve’s apartment.

He snuck into the building by holding the door open for an elderly lady who was struggling to carry her groceries up the stairs. He helped her up to her apartment, and then headed down the hall to Steve’s.

There was no response to Sam’s knock on the door.

“Steve,” Sam called after another few minutes. He knocked again. “It’s me.”

“I know you can hear me,” Sam said. “Last time I checked, you still had that super-hearing.”

Silence.

“If you’re standing on the other side of the door and hoping that I’m just going to give up and go away, you’re out of luck,” Sam said. “I’ve got all day. I can hang out here for hours. Maybe I’ll sing some songs. Recite some poetry. Who knows.”

Sam gave it a few minutes this time.

Still nothing.

“Okay,” Sam said firmly. “I’m going to try and kick your door down. If I can’t do that, I’m going to call Natasha and have her come over and pick the lock for me. That’s not an empty threat, either. You and I both know she’d do it. And if that doesn’t work, I’m going to – “

The door opened.

“Oh,” Sam said in surprise. “Hi.”

“What’s wrong,” Steve said. He leaned in the doorway, watching Sam tiredly. He was dressed in a rumpled t-shirt and sweatpants, and his hair was a tousled mess.

“What’s wrong?” Sam said incredulously. “What’s wrong is that you won’t answer anyone’s texts, and you won’t pick up your damn phone!”

“So you came to my apartment?” Steve asked. His voice was a monotone.

Sam stared at him. “Hell yes I came to your apartment! Steve, Fury got shot in your apartment _through your damn wall!_ ”

“I remember,” Steve said dully.

Sam threw his hands in the air. “Well, how was I supposed to know that something like that hadn’t happened again?”

Steve sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Sam. I honestly just forgot to answer my texts.”

“And my phone calls?”

“I don’t remember hearing those,” Steve said with a frown. “I might have been asleep.”

“You – “ Sam said, before he cut himself off. “Look, can I just come in?”

“Yeah,” Steve said listlessly. He stepped back and let Sam follow him inside.

Sam raised his eyebrows when he saw the state of Steve’s apartment. It wasn’t… dirty, exactly, or even really all that messy. It just very much looked like Steve had made no effort to keep it clean.

The kitchen table was covered in stacks of paper and file folders, with a small space carved out for Steve’s laptop. Sam didn’t have to look to know that each page would be information on Barnes or Hydra or both.

The kitchen sink was filled with dishes that had been rinsed, but not yet placed in the dishwasher. Empty bags of chips and cheap noodle packets were tossed in a corner of the counter, as if Steve had been meaning to recycle them but hadn’t gotten around to it.

The couch next to the table had a blanket messily thrown over it. It looked like Steve had been sleeping there, just steps away from his kitchen table.

“Do you want something to drink?” Steve asked. He opened his fridge as Sam leaned against the kitchen counter.

There was nothing in Steve’s fridge except for a single stick of butter, a bottle of ketchup, and a jar of spaghetti sauce.

“Uh,” Steve said. He shut the fridge and opened a few of his cupboards. The only thing in there were more ramen noodles and the occasional box of macaroni.

“Water,” Steve said finally. “Do you want some water?”

“Sure,” Sam said. “Thanks.”

Steve opened up the cupboard that held his dishes. There were clearly no cups left.

“Jesus,” Steve muttered under his breath. He opened the dishwasher and grabbed a clean glass from there. He filled it up with tap water and handed it to Sam.

“Thanks,” Sam said again.

“How’s Carmen?” Steve asked. He wandered over to the couch and sat down on it, slumping back against the cushions.

“She’s good,” Sam said, taking a seat opposite Steve. “We’re taking her daughter to see the Beauty and the Beast musical this weekend.”

“That’s great,” Steve said, a genuine smile crossing his face. “I’m sure any kid would love that.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Sam said. “If it’s terrible, I’ll just take a nap.”

“You’re going to take a nap during the singing and dancing?”

Sam shrugged. “Hey, I can nap anywhere if need be.”

The room fell silent again. Steve’s gaze drifted back to the stacks of paper on his kitchen table.

“Steve,” Sam said gently.

“Hmm?” Steve asked, finally dragging his eyes back to Sam.

“Come stay with me,” Sam said.

Steve frowned. “What? Why?”

Sam sighed. “Steve, the last time I saw an apartment like this and a person acting the way you are, the guy killed himself two weeks later.”

Steve stared at him. “I’m not…”

“Yeah, that’s what he said too,” Sam said. “Come on. I’ve got that extra bedroom, you can crash there for a while. You can bring your laptop and all those files with you, if you want. It’ll get Natasha off my back, at least. She texts me like three times a day asking how you are.”

Steve somehow seemed to slump further into the couch cushions. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to worry anyone.”

“Well, it’s happening anyway, so…”

Steve shook his head. “I’m fine, Sam, really. You’ve already done way too much for me, I can’t impose like that.”

“You wouldn’t be imposing,” Sam tried.

“I would be,” Steve said firmly. “I’m okay here, Sam. My sleep schedule’s just a little off from all the travelling.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “It’s been weeks.”

Steve shrugged. “And I just haven’t had much of a chance to clean up around here. Or to get groceries. I’ve been really busy with all the…”

He gestured at the mess on his kitchen table.

Sam sighed. “Anything new with that? Any sign of Barnes?”

“Well, no, but – “

“Steve, you said you were going to take a break.”

Steve shook his head. “I can’t.”

Sam crossed his arms.

“I tried!” Steve insisted. “I really did, Sam. I just… I can’t sit still, I don’t know _how_ to sit still. Jesus, I haven’t had this much free time since… well, since that time I got pneumonia before the war and couldn’t work for months.”

“There are things you can do,” Sam said. “Other than obsessively hunting down Barnes. Come down to the VA a few days a week. Start running again. Volunteer at an animal shelter. I don’t know, Steve. There’s plenty – “

“You’re right,” Steve mumbled. “I should go volunteer with an organization, it’s a waste if I just keep sitting here – “

“No,” Sam said hastily. “That’s not what I meant, don’t say it like that.”

Steve frowned. “Like what?”

“Like… like it’s your duty to help people or something like that.”

“It… it is, though,” Steve said.

Sam groaned and dropped his head into his hands. “Steve!”

“What?”

“We’ve been over this before,” Sam said desperately. “So many times. You don’t owe anyone anything – “

“They gave me this body so that I could help people.”

“And you have! Jesus, Steve, you’ve nearly died _twice_ for this country and I’m not even counting the times that your injuries were just ‘nearly fatal’ instead of ‘certainly fatal’.”

Steve frowned. “Exactly. _Nearly_ did, I haven’t yet and so – “

“Oh my god,” Sam said. “I can’t do this. We _cannot_ have this discussion again.”

“Great,” Steve said. “Then let’s not.”

Sam groaned and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Okay. I’m going to talk to Carmen, and we’re going to make you a list of the best therapists in the city – “

“Sam, no – “

“Steve,” Sam said desperately. “You have to do _something_. I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but something’s gotta change. Please.”

“Things will change,” Steve said. “Once I find Bucky.”

Sam sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly I'm so tired right now that I don't even know if this chapter makes any sense. but thank you guys for being so wonderful and kind to me I love it and I love you
> 
> I'm on tumblr [here](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a warning for very minor self-harm behaviour, sort of.

There were more famous people at this party than Sam had thought possible.

Sam wasn’t entirely sure _why_ all these celebrities were at Tony’s party, but apparently if you were famous enough, you got an invite. Either way, it made for an entertaining evening of trying to meet as many of them as possible.

“Sam,” Natasha said, appearing out of nowhere.

“Natasha!” Sam said enthusiastically. He leaned over and pulled her into a hug. “You’re here!”

“I just got in a few hours ago.”

Sam frowned, leaning back. “And you came right to Stark’s party? Why would you do that to yourself? Jet lag is a great excuse not to come.”

She laughed. “I don’t mind. I usually just talk to Pepper. Well, and I spend most of my time dragging Clint away from the bar.”

“Oh,” Sam said guiltily. “I may have, uh, challenged him to a series of drinking games.”

“I noticed,” she said dryly. “Have you seen Steve?”

Sam shook his head. “Not for a while. I think he might have gone home.”

Natasha frowned. “I didn’t see him leave.”

Sam sighed. “We should find him, then.”

“Maybe he just needs a moment,” Natasha said. “I don’t want to pressure him…”

“No,” Sam repeated. “We should find him.”

Natasha watched him carefully. “Okay.”

 

Sam found him twenty minutes later, on one of the many balconies in Stark tower.

“Hey,” Sam said, carefully shutting the door behind him. He winced as the cold night air swirled around him.

“Hi,” Steve responded, not turning around. He was leaning with his arms on the balcony railing, a drink in his hand.

“Dude, what are you doing out here?” Sam asked. He tugged his suit jacket a little tighter around him. “Natasha’s here. She’s looking for you.”

“Oh,” Steve said vacantly. “I just needed some air.”

“Well, this air is damn cold,” Sam muttered. He joined Steve at the railing.

“You can go back inside,” Steve said. He was staring down over the edge of the balcony.

“Nah,” Sam said. “I should probably take a break too. That open bar is really getting to me.”

Steve finally smiled a little. “How many have you had?”

“Not that many,” Sam insisted. “I was sober enough to come and find you hiding out here, wasn’t I?”

“I’m not hiding,” Steve mumbled. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the steep drop off the edge of the building.

“I dunno man, Natasha couldn’t find you,” Sam said. “That means you’re hiding pretty well.”

Steve didn’t reply to that. He continued to stare.

Sam sighed. “Dude, not gonna lie, you’re kind of freaking me out with the way you’re looking over the edge here.”

“Oh,” Steve said, and finally blinked. “Oh, sorry. No, I was just… thinking.”

“About?”

Steve shrugged listlessly. “Do you know how Bucky died? Well, how we thought he died?”

Sam’s heart sank. “I know what the textbooks and documentaries said. That he fell off a train during a mission.”

Steve nodded slowly. “He must have been scared, I think. While he was falling. It was high enough up that he would have had time to realize what was happening.”

“Steve,” Sam said quietly. “This isn’t going to do anyone any good. There’s no point – “

“When it first happened,” Steve continued, as if Sam hadn’t spoken. “I thought that it was the worst. That him being dead was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I couldn’t understand it, I kept thinking that I’d turn around and he’d be standing there. I kept referring to him in the present tense. It didn’t seem possible, that he just… wouldn’t be there, anymore. He was always there, my whole life. The world shouldn’t have continued after he was gone, it just didn’t make sense.”

“Steve,” Sam tried.

“And yeah, that was the worst,” Steve said. “Everything after that was just… more. More terrible, awful things. But this? Knowing that he was alive, all this time? That he was suffering like that and I didn’t do anything to stop it? This is worse, I think.”

“You couldn’t have – “

Steve finished his drink. “He would have wanted to die. He would have rather been killed than… than have something like this happen. This would have been his nightmare.”

Sam didn’t know what to say.

“I think it would have been better if he’d just died,” Steve said, and crushed the glass in his hand.

Sam yelped and grabbed Steve’s arm, forcing Steve’s hand open. He grabbed the remnants of the glass and set it on the table beside him.

Blood was already welling up on Steve’s palm from where the shards of glass were sticking out of his skin.

“Let’s go inside,” Sam said sharply. “We need to get this cleaned up – “

“It’s fine,” Steve said tonelessly. He tugged his arm out of Sam’s grasp and started pulling the shards of glass out of his hand. He tossed them over the edge of the building and watched them fall.

“Steve – “

“It’ll heal,” Steve said. He held his hand out over the rail and watched the blood drip into the open night air.

“It’ll heal a lot faster if we get it bandaged up,” Sam said.

“Nah,” Steve said. He turned his hand palm-up so that Sam could see that blood was already starting to clot. “It’s fine.”

Sam caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Natasha was standing behind them, a frown on her face.

Sam shrugged helplessly, and her frown deepened.

“We should get back to the party,” Steve said, after another few minutes. “Tony will hunt us down otherwise.”

He turned and went back inside, not even noticing that Natasha was standing in the corner.

“How long?” she asked Sam softly. “How long has he been like this?”

Sam shook his head. “Since we got back.”

Natasha frowned. “And he’s still insisting on coming on that mission that Tony’s planning?”

“I tried to talk him out of it. Didn’t work.”

“Hm,” Natasha said. She turned and followed Steve back into the building. Sam stared at the pile of broken glass on the table for another moment, before he too walked back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW sorry about that little disappearing act I pulled there. I went away for the weekend and the hotel had a limited amount of internet. Anyway, thank you guys for all your wonderful comments and for sticking around!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter should probably just be called "everything continues to be terrible"

The mission didn’t go well.

It wasn’t Sam’s first mission with the Avengers, but it was the first one that had gone like this.

It had been the standard find-location-of-bad-guys, kill-said-bad-guys type of thing, except these particular bad guys had been holding a bunch of civilians hostage. In what Sam considered to be a particularly dick move, the Hydra agents had killed all the civilians before the Avengers could get to them and then committed mass suicide.

No one was happy about this. Bruce had stayed on the plane with Hill, and Sam, Tony, Steve, Natasha, and Clint had gone in to clear the place out.

There’d been nothing left but bodies and old equipment. Steve had split off to search one of the lower floors, and the others had found themselves in the largest room yet.

It had the most modern equipment they’d found. A large screen across one wall was surrounded by other, smaller screens. There was a control panel beneath them, and stacks of files and boxes scattered around the room.

There was no rush to get out of the building, due to everyone already being dead, and so Natasha sat down and booted up the computer.

Clint and Sam flipped through some of the files in the boxes. Tony was talking to his AI while he was still inside of his suit, which struck Sam as kind of weird, but, whatever.

“Wait,” Clint said suddenly, glancing up to stare at the screen. “Go back.”

Natasha obediently tapped a few keys onto the keyboard, and the images on the screen started to flash backward.

“Stop,” Clint said. Natasha froze the image. “Is that Steve?”

All of them leaned forward, crowding around the large screens.

“Holy shit,” Tony said. “That’s Steve.”

“Hit play, hit play,” Clint said.

Natasha hit a button, and the image started to play. Sound blared through the speakers. It was tinny and a little fuzzy, but it was definitely audio.

The video was of a group of men, all seated around what looked to be a makeshift campsite. From the looks of the clothes they were wearing and the weapons they had with them, it looked to be from the early 1940s.

It was very clearly footage of the Howling Commandos.

Steve was sitting on the ground, leaning against a backpack. He was writing something on a piece of paper, clearly concentrating hard on it.

The other men were also lounging around. Their faces were familiar to Sam, and he was pretty sure that they were familiar to everyone else too. The Howling Commandos were legendary.

They weren’t performing any heroic actions now, though. They were just resting, a few of them chatting quietly.

“We should get Steve in here,” Natasha said. Clint turned and ran out into the hall. Sam could hear him calling Steve’s name.

He returned a moment later, with Steve right behind him.

“What’s going on?” Steve asked, frowning.

“Steve, you should come look at this,” Sam said, as calmly as he could. Steve stared at him, but walked up to stand with the group.

Steve’s eyes widened and his jaw went slack as he stared at the screen.

“I found this in their archives,” Natasha told him quietly. Steve didn’t look at her, his eyes fixed on the screen.

On the screen, one of the men sprawled out nearest to Steve sat up slightly. He leaned back on his elbows, and kicked Steve gently with one foot.

It was very clearly Bucky Barnes, but certainly not the Bucky Barnes that Sam had personally met. This guy was young, dressed in a slightly ragged uniform and wearing a bright smile.

“Steve,” Barnes said. The Steve standing next to Sam now visibly shuddered at the sound of his voice. “What’re you writing?”

“It’s probably a love letter,” Morita said. “That’s all he ever writes.”

Steve audibly sighed, shaking his head, but a small smile crept across his face. He looked much younger in the video. Lighter.

“Lemme see,” Barnes said. He kicked Steve again. “Come on, Steve, read it out loud.”

The other men laughed.

“Yeah, share it with the class,” Dugan said.

Steve groaned. “It’s not – it’s not a _love letter_.”

“Uh huh,” Barnes said. “Sure it’s not.”

“It’s not!” Steve protested as the others jeered. “It’s the report on our last mission! Which, by the way, you’re all supposed to add to.”

“Why would we add to your love letters?” Barnes asked innocently.

Steve kicked at him, and Barnes drew his legs back in.

Falsworth, who’d been wandering around the edge of the campsite, darted forward and grabbed the letter from Steve’s hand.

“Hey!” Steve protested. He reached for it, but Falsworth tossed the paper to Barnes. Barnes scrambled to his feet and caught it, jumping out of the way as Steve lunged for him.

“All right, let’s take a look,” Barnes said with a grin, clearly enjoying the laughter around the campsite. Steve chased him, but he was laughing now too.

It was strange for Sam to see Steve laugh like that. From the looks on the other Avengers’ faces, it was strange for them too.

“Dear Agent Carter,” Barnes said dramatically. He ducked out of the way as Steve tried to grab the paper. “I have been pining for you since the last time we met. All I can think about is your lovely eyes and your lovely hair. I dream of a day when we will be reunited – “

“Jesus, Bucky,” Steve shouted. “That is _not_ what it says.”

“I think of you night and day,” Barnes continued. He threw an arm out for dramatic flair. “I can only hope that you feel the same way about me – “

Steve finally managed to tackle him. Barnes tripped over one of the packs lying on the ground and landed hard on his back in the dirt. He kept laughing, though, trying to scramble away from Steve (who was now pinning him onto the ground).

“Grab it!” he called to the others. He held the letter out, and Morita jumped forward and grabbed it from his hand.

“Oh, come on,” Steve shouted. He continued to easily pin Barnes against the ground, ignoring his struggles and laughter.

“What does it actually say?” Dugan asked.

“Oh,” Morita said with disappointment as he scanned it. “It really is just a field report.”

“Told you,” Steve said triumphantly. He yelped and tumbled into the dirt as Barnes finally managed to wiggle out from underneath him.

“Maybe there’s a hidden message,” Gabe Jones supplied helpfully.

Steve groaned, which just made all of his teammates laugh harder.

The screen went blank.

Sam blinked. He glanced around at the others, who were all looking at Steve worriedly. Steve was staring at the blank screen, his face impassive.

“Is there more?” he asked slowly.

“I don’t know,” Natasha said. “I’ve just been going through them – “

“Keep going,” Steve said.

“Are you sure about that, Steve?” Sam asked carefully.

“Yes,” Steve said. Sam shook his head and turned back to the screen.

“Did you know you were being filmed?” Tony asked him.

“No,” Steve said distantly. The colour had drained from his face. Tony continued to babble on about the technology that this would have taken, but no one was really listening.

Natasha started flipping through the images again. There were no more videos of Steve. Instead, she fast-forwarded through video after video of what looked like interviews. Or interrogations. It was hard to tell.

“Stop,” Steve said suddenly. Natasha froze the image, and then hit play.

They all stood in silence, staring at the tv screen. The camera was now in what looked to be some kind of cell. The walls were cement, and there was what appeared to be bloodstains all over the floor. The walls were lined with tables containing various items, although it was hard to tell what most of them were from the slightly grainy footage.

In the middle of the room knelt Bucky Barnes.

He was dressed only in an ugly loose pair of pants and a ratty shirt. His face was bruised and swollen, and there were cuts and scrapes all down his jaw and shoulders.

He also only had one arm.

He was kneeling, and his wrist was chained down almost to the floor. His ankles also looked like they were bound.

Barnes was trembling slightly. He looked exhausted, the dark circles under his eyes almost as bad as the bruises on his skin. His jaw was clenched defiantly though, and there was a spark of life in his eyes.

Sam turned to look at Steve. Steve was staring at the screen, his hands clenched into fists at his side.

“Maybe we shouldn’t –“ Sam tried, and Natasha nodded quickly.

“No,” Steve snapped. “Keep it playing.”

“Steve – “ Natasha tried.

“Keep. It. Playing,” Steve said.

Natasha did.

A door opened and shut somewhere off camera. Barnes glanced off to the side, and a determined smile spread across his face.

“Good mornin’,” he drawled, as someone walked across the camera’s view. “Or night. Afternoon, maybe.”

“It is of no concern to you what time it is,” the man said. His accent was thick, but Sam had no idea where the accent was actually from.

“Just bein’ polite,” Barnes said with another grin.

“I would have thought you would have realized by now that politeness will get you nowhere,” the man said. He walked over to one of the tables alongside the wall, allowing Sam to finally catch a glimpse of his face. The man was unremarkable, but he was wearing a white lab coat. Sam doubted that boded well.

“Then again,” the scientist said thoughtfully. “Nothing you say will get you anywhere.”

He walked over to where Bucky was kneeling. “Take the shirt off.”

“Can’t,” Barnes said. He held up his right hand, displaying the shackle around his wrist. “You’ve got me locked up, remember?”

“Fine,” the man said irritably. He leaned down and produced a pair of scissors, getting Barnes’s shirt off him in a matter of minutes.

Sam’s stomach turned over as the scientist pulled Barnes’s shirt away. From the look on Steve’s face, his stomach was doing the same.

Barnes’ torso was covered in bruises and welts, but that wasn’t the worst part. His left arm was missing from the elbow downwards, a bloodsoaked bandage tied around it.

Sam was not a doctor, but he knew enough to know that the remaining part of Barnes’s arm was infected, and badly so. Necrosis had clearly set in, which meant that the infection had been present for a while.

Barnes was clearly feeling the effects of it. He winced as the scientist pulled his shirt off, although he didn’t make a sound. His face was deathly pale underneath his bruises and cuts, except for bright flush across his cheekbones that indicated a fever.

“Hmm,” the scientist said.

“What’s that supposed to mean,” Barnes mumbled. He swayed a little.

The scientist ignored him and pulled a notebook out of his pocket. He walked in a circle around Barnes, taking notes.

After another few minutes, the scientist turned and strode out of the room. A door shut somewhere off camera, and Barnes’s shoulders immediately slumped. He fell backwards so that he was sitting on the floor, his legs curled awkwardly underneath him. His head fell forward.

“Steve,” Natasha tried again. “We don’t have to watch this.”

Steve ignored her. He stared resolutely at the screen, his jaw clenched.

Barnes suddenly pushed himself upright again, shakily kneeling on the concrete floor. He took a deep breath in, as if trying to steady himself.

The scientist reappeared. He headed straight for the table against the opposite wall.

“So, what’s on the schedule for today?” Barnes said snarkily.

“This,” the scientist said. He turned around and shot Barnes in the stomach.

Barnes screamed, falling backwards onto the floor behind him. He writhed frantically, the shackles scraping against the concrete.

“Stop moving around,” the scientist said irritably.

Barnes ignored him, curling in himself as best he could.

The scientist scowled, turning to the table beside him. He picked up a syringe and walked over to where Barnes was laying.

“You’re just making this harder on yourself,” the scientist told him as he injected the substance into Barnes’s neck.

Barnes’s movements slowed. The scientist pulled him over so that he was lying on his back, the wound in his stomach already bleeding sluggishly.

The scientist poked and prodded at the wound, and then returned to writing in his notebook. Barnes lay on the floor, his eyes still open and his face a grimace.

“Well, that’s it for today,” the scientist said eventually. He stood up and walked out of the room, the door shutting behind him.

Bucky lay there for a few minutes before he slowly curled up again. His shoulders started to shake, and even the tinny microphone picked up on the sound of his harsh breaths, punctuated by sobs.

The video finally, mercifully, ended. There was silence for the room for a long moment, during which everyone turned to look at Steve.

He was perfectly, absolutely still. He did not blink or breathe. He just stood at stared at the now blank screen.

“Steve – “ Sam tried.

“Keep going,” Steve said, his voice flat.

“We can download these files,” Natasha tried. “You can look at them later, when we’re back in New York.”

“You can go,” Steve said. “I’m going to watch the rest.

Natasha glanced at Sam, and he shrugged slightly. It would be no use trying to convince Steve otherwise now.

Natasha typed something on the keyboard, and the screen flickered to life again. Clint shifted slightly on his feet next to her, so that his hand could lightly brush her shoulder. Behind Sam, Tony still stood in his suit, uncharacteristically quiet.

The screen now showed what looked to be a sort of operating room. Barnes was lying on the table, flat on his back with his face towards the ceiling. The infection had taken more of his arm now, the dark and damaged tissue extending upwards above his elbow.

He was still wearing the same dirty pants as before, and he wore no shirt. The bullet wound in his stomach had healed over, leaving just a shiny scar. The bruises and cuts from the last video were gone now, but new ones had taken their place.

There were people moving around the room, but their faces were shadowed and their voices low. Barnes, though, was mumbling indistinctly. He slowly moved his head back and forth, as if trying to get a sense of his bearings.

One of the people moved forward and started pulling straps out from under the table. He tightened them around Barnes’s legs first, ignoring his weak and futile attempts to move out of the way.

“Whas’ goin’ on,” Barnes mumbled, his voice slightly louder. “What’s…”

The other occupants of the room ignored him, continuing to prep for… something.

Barnes lifted his head slightly as the man started to strap down his torso as well. His eyes widened with alarm.

“I won’t… I won’t move, you don’t… you don’t have to…” he said thickly. The man ignored him and pushed his shoulders back against the table.

Barnes moaned again. He looked very young now, his eyes wide and frightened.

“Oh, jesus,” Sam said as the scientists spread out around the table that Barnes lay on. One of them had a saw in his hand.

Sam turned away as the man placed the saw above the infected tissue of Barnes’s arm. He still heard the agonized screams start, though, before Natasha turned the video off.

“You don’t need to watch this,” she said to Steve.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. All of the colour was gone from his face.

“Well, the rest of us don’t,” she snapped. “I’ll download it with the rest of the information. You can watch it later.”

The two of them stared each other for a long moment, both of their faces set. Apparently Natasha won, because Steve abruptly turned away.

“I’ll finish the rest of this floor,” he said flatly. “Meet back in the courtyard in twenty.”

Sam waited until Steve was out of the door and safely down the hallway.

“You aren’t really going to give it to him to watch later, are you?” he asked Natasha quietly.

“Of course not,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't blame me for the probable multitude of errors, I wrote and edited this while watching The Affair with my housemates
> 
> I am on tumblr [here](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything is still terrible lmao

Steve was waiting when Sam met him in the courtyard twenty minutes later. Steve was standing with his back to the wall, his body stiff and still. His face was completely blank, and it chilled Sam to the bone.

“You doing okay?” Sam asked him quietly. Steve didn’t even look at him, just kept staring straight ahead.

“Fine,” Steve said. His voice had no intonation at all.

“That was pretty brutal to watch,” Sam said quietly. Steve didn’t reply.

“If you need to talk about it,” Sam tried. “You know you can talk to me.”

“I know, Sam,” Steve said. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

They were left standing in silence. Sam desperately wanted to help, he wanted to do _something_ , but Steve was just… gone.

Eventually, everyone else made their way out of the building. They headed back to the plane, Clint and Tony bantering to fill the silence. Natasha’s face was creased with a small frown, and she kept to the back of the group.

“Welcome back,” Banner said as they climbed back onto the plane. Steve walked straight past him, and Banner frowned at the empty look on his face.

“Everything okay?” Banner asked as he took in the grim atmosphere of the group.

“Everyone is… physically fine,” Clint offered as he started taking off his weapons.

“Okay,” Banner said, but he didn’t look comforted.

Sam kept an eye on Steve as the plane took off. Everyone had stretched out on the couches in the sitting area, and were chatting casually. Steve sat with them, but he stared blankly ahead and said nothing. Sam knew that it wouldn’t end well if he kept prying, so he did nothing except toss Steve a bottle of water. Steve caught it without looking in Sam’s direction and muttered a flat ‘thank you’.

The first part of the flight back was calm. Tony produced snacks from somewhere, and everyone dug in. Well, everyone except Steve, until Natasha passed him an open bag of chips and stared him down until he slowly ate the rest of it.

Two hours into the flight, Steve’s phone rang. Tony’s plane had cell reception, which Sam thought was weird but also pretty cool.

Steve didn’t even seem to notice. He just sat, staring at the wall.

“Steve,” Clint said when Steve didn’t move. “I think your phone is ringing.’

“Oh,” Steve said, and blinked. He pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it on, getting to his feet to answer the call. He walked over to the storage area of the plane, although they could all still clearly hear what he was saying.

“Hello?” Steve said. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. What’s – “

There was a long pause.

“Oh,” Steve said. His voice had changed slightly.

Sam and Natasha looked at each other.

“Three days ago?” Steve said. His voice got louder. “Three damn days ago? Why am I only hearing about this now?”

Natasha’s face fell, and Sam was pretty sure his did too. This didn’t sound good.

“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. This, this isn’t your fault. I, I just… yes. All right. Yes. Okay. Thank, thank you for telling me. Yeah. Bye.”

There was a long, awkward silence after Steve hung up the phone. The rest of the group sat and stared at each other, unsure of what to say. Steve stood at the other end of the plane, shadowed by the tall storage lockers.

Abruptly, Steve turned around and hurled his phone into the wall. It shattered into thousands of tiny pieces.

All of them jumped. Steve had both of his hands against the storage locker in front of him, his head bowed and his breathing ragged.

Sam jumped over the back of the couch and cautiously made his way through the racks of weapons.

“Steve?” he asked carefully. “Are you okay?”

Steve shook his head, his face still hidden by his arms.

“What happened?” Sam tried. Steve just shook his head again.

Steve wasn’t… crying, exactly. It sounded a little like a panic attack to Sam, but it was as if Steve was desperately trying not to let it out.

Steve eventually stumbled backward and slumped against the row of lockers behind him, sliding down until he was sitting on the ground. He pulled his knees up and rested his elbows on them, letting his head fall forward again.

Sam sat down next to him. He wanted so badly to say something, to say _anything_ , but he didn’t know what was going on.

Natasha appeared a few minutes later and knelt down beside Sam. She held out a tablet.

He took it from her. There was a newspaper article displayed on the screen.

Sam only had to read the headline.

**Peggy Carter, Co-Founder of SHIELD, Dies at Age 95**

Sam sighed. He’d never heard Steve mention Peggy Carter directly, but he’d heard enough about Captain America when he was a kid to know about their fabled love story.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Sam said quietly. Steve didn’t look up.

Sam looked helplessly at Natasha. She shrugged, her eyes on Steve. There was a deep sadness on her face, too.

After another few minutes of painful silence, punctuated only by Steve’s harsh breathing, Natasha got up and moved closer. She sat down next to Steve, letting her shoulder gently brush against his arm. Steve didn’t say anything, but his breathing started to even out a little. He leaned against her.

The rest of the flight was quiet, and mercifully short. The others talked quietly on the other side of the plane, chatting about harmless, unimportant things. Sam could see them occasionally glance over with worried looks on their faces.

Steve didn’t look up for the rest of the flight. Natasha and Sam sat with him in silence.

The plane finally settled into its place at the top of Stark tower. The back doors of the plane slowly opened into the small hanger.

Steve rolled onto his feet and took off down the ramp before Natasha or Sam could say anything. He was out the hanger door in an instant.

Sam sighed.

 

They went over later that evening.

Sam had tried to call Steve off and on throughout the day. Steve hadn’t picked up the phone, and he hadn’t responded to any of Natasha’s texts.

Natasha picked Sam up from his apartment, and they went over to Steve’s together.

Steve’s apartment building was quiet, and the hallway outside his door was empty.

“Steve?” Sam called as he knocked on the door. “It’s Sam. And Natasha.”

There was no reply.

After another few minutes, Natasha produced a key from her pocket.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “He gave you a key to his apartment?”

“No,” Natasha said. She unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Sam’s heart sank as the door swung shut behind them.

Steve’s apartment was trashed. There was broken glass all over the floor, and most of the furniture was cracked or in pieces. All of the generic landscape pictures that had been on the wall when Steve had bought the apartment were strewn across the living room. Most of the cupboards in the kitchen had been thrown open, and dishes and glasses were broken all over the counters.

Steve was sitting in the wreckage of his living room, his back against the wall. He was sitting like he had been on the plane, with his knees pulled up and his elbows resting on them. His hands were fisted in his hair.

Sam picked his way through the debris. He crouched down next to Steve.

Steve’s ragged breathing was now punctuated by sobs that shook his entire body. His knuckles were bruised and cut from where he’d ripped his apartment apart, and Sam could see scratches and cuts along his arms as well.

“Steve,” Sam tried, but he doubted that Steve could even hear him. He didn’t respond at all to Sam’s words.

Sam looked up at Natasha, but she looked to be at even more of a loss than he was. She stood next to them, her arms folded and her jaw clenched tight.

It just about broke Sam’s heart. He hated seeing people like this. He hated seeing someone in pain, and he especially hated when there was nothing he could do about it. He worked at the VA, which meant that he saw a lot of situations like this. It never got easier, though, and he never got used to dealing with it.

Finally, Natasha knelt down next to Steve. She gently wrapped her hands around Steve’s torn-up wrists and carefully pulled his hands out of his hair. He let her do it, his arms falling bonelessly into his lap.

Natasha slid her arms around one of his, slowly and carefully. They sat like that for a while, until Steve finally slid his arm around her shoulders. She curled into his chest, still not saying a word.

After what felt like an eternity, Steve finally quieted. His breathing evened out, and eventually started to slow. Sam had no doubt that he had worn himself out.

“Steve,” Natasha said eventually. She disentangled herself from him and got to her feet, tugging gently at his arm. “Come on.”

Steve stumbled to his feet and followed her. She pulled him into his bedroom, where he finally crawled onto his bed. Sam leaned in the doorway as Natasha sat down next to him again, her hands stroking his hair.

Sam eventually turned and went back out into the main living area. He got to work cleaning up the mess. He knew from personal experience that there was nothing worse than waking up after a bad night and having to clean up the mess you’d caused.

He swept up the broken glass first, and then set to work righting the furniture. He left the broken pieces of furniture in a pile with the bags of shattered glass. He’d deal with that later.

He got the glass off the counters and finished cleaning the kitchen. He set the books back up on the bookshelves and stacked the few dvds next to the tv.

It was disheartening to see how few things were really in the apartment. Aside from the books and the dvds, there was really nothing to indicate that someone was living there. There were only a few groceries in the fridge and in the cupboards, and there were no pictures or photographs that weren’t of stock images. A single laptop and a tablet were the only personal items in the entire living room and kitchen. It looked more like a hotel than a place where someone lived permanently.

When he was finished, Sam wandered back into the bedroom. Steve was asleep now, curled up on top of his covers in a way that made him seem much smaller than he was. Natasha sat next to him, her chin on her hand and her face sad.

She looked up when Sam came to stand in the doorway. She carefully climbed off of the bed and followed him out of the room, leaving the door to the bedroom open slightly.

Natasha went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water out of the sparse fridge. She leaned back against the counter, looking at Sam.

“What are we going to do?” she asked quietly. “I’m out of my depth here, Sam. This isn’t… this isn’t something I know how to deal with.”

Sam shook his head. “There’s not really anything more we can do, other than what we’re already doing. There’s no easy answers here.”

Natasha stared down at the water bottle in her hand. “I don’t know how to fix something like this.”

Sam shrugged listlessly. “I’ve tried to get him to see a therapist. He won’t do it, and you know how stubborn he is. But really, even then, there’s only so much that can do. I mean, we can’t change what’s already happened to him. And what keeps happening.”

“I’ve never…” Natasha said slowly. “I’ve never had anyone to lose, not like he has. I don’t really know what that feels like. I don’t know how to help him.”

“I’ve lost people,” Sam said. “But on a smaller scale, obviously. I can’t imagine losing everyone I’ve ever known at once. I don’t even want to imagine that. And that doesn’t even take into account the war. I mean, he went straight from the depths of the second World War into another one here.”

“And then the thing with Barnes,” Natasha said, a frown creasing her face. “That’s… you and I both know that’s not going to end well, Sam. He’s obsessed with it.”

“Hey, I probably would be too, if my dead best friend came back to life,” Sam offered. Natasha rolled her eyes. “But yeah, I know what you mean. Try telling him that, though. I think it’s the only thing he’s got left.”

Natasha nodded, her eyes sad. “I think it’s easier, living like I do. Don’t have as much to lose.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Maybe not.”

Natasha closed her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK THAT'S IT IT'S GONNA TURN AROUND NOW I PROMISE


	7. Chapter 7

Steve slept straight through the evening and well into the morning.

Sam ducked out when the sun started to rise, and dragged the bags of broken glass and furniture down to the dumpster. He stopped by the grocery store and picked up a few bags of fresh food before he returned.

Steve was still asleep when he got back, with Natasha curled up beside him. Sam put all the groceries away, and started placing the piles of dirty dishes into the dishwasher.

Sam was making breakfast when Steve finally wandered out of his room.

“Morning,” Sam said casually. He flipped over the omelet he was working on.

Steve stared at him. He looked little better than he had the night before, at least. His face was still a little swollen and the dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises, but at least his breathing was steady.

Steve slowly looked around at his now-clean kitchen and neatly stocked shelves.

“Sam…” Steve said slowly. Sam transferred the omelet to a plate and held it out to him.

“Eat first,” Sam said. “And then talk.”

Steve obediently took the plate and sat down on one of the bar stools at the counter. Sam started work on another omelet while Steve ate.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said, once he’d finished eating.

Sam sighed. “For what?”

Steve shifted uncomfortably. “For last night. I…”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Sam said. He put his own omelet on a plate and grabbed a fork.

“You didn’t have to do all this,” Steve said, a little desperately.

“Of course not,” Sam said with a frown. He took another bite of his omelet. “I wanted to.”

Steve sighed. He seemed like he was too tired to argue, for once. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Sam finished eating his omelet. Steve propped his elbow on the counter and rested his head on his hand.

“Feel up to going for a run?” Sam asked.

“Can’t,” Steve said tiredly. “Funeral’s in a few hours. Gotta get ready for it.”

Sam winced. “Want us to come with you?”

“No,” Steve said. “Thanks, though. You guys have done enough for me already.”

“We wouldn’t mind,” Sam said gently.

Steve shook his head. “You guys should head home. Get some sleep. I don’t want to inconvenience you more than I already have – “

“Steve,” Sam interrupted. “Don’t.”

Steve sighed and folded his arms on the table, letting his head drop down to rest on them.

“So what now?” Sam asked. He set his plate in the dishwasher and started making Natasha’s breakfast.

“What do you mean?”

“Steve,” Sam said. “You can’t keep living like this.”

Steve lifted his head and stared miserably at the countertop. “What else am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, but something’s gotta change.”

“I can’t give up on Bucky,” Steve said desperately. “I can’t stop looking – “

“You don’t have to. That’s not what I’m saying. But Steve, you’re not going to be able to help him if you’re like this.”

Steve dropped his head onto his arms again.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Sam said. “First of all, no more moping around your apartment.”

“I’m not _moping,”_ Steve mumbled.

“Fine,” Sam said. “No hanging around your apartment obsessively rereading the same files over and over.”

Steve frowned, but didn’t protest.

“Maybe think about going running again,” Sam continued. “Get some routine back. You don’t have to go with me, but take Natasha along or something. She can probably keep up with you better than I can.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Natasha called sleepily from the bedroom.

Sam laughed. “Anyway. Maybe come to the VA with me a few days a week.”

“I already do that sometimes.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Slipping in halfway through a random meeting doesn’t count.”

“All right,” Steve said finally. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” Sam said. “And then we’ll go from there, okay?”

Steve nodded tiredly. “I kind of just want to go back to bed now, though. Just until I have to leave for the funeral.”

“I don’t blame you,” Sam said. His own exhaustion was weighing heavily on him.

Steve was asleep again less than an hour later. Natasha set to cleaning up the kitchen after they’d all eaten breakfast, and Sam finally let himself pass out on the couch for a while.

 

When Sam woke up, Steve and Natasha were already gone. Sam made his way back to his own apartment, and fell face-first on his bed. He slept for another few hours before he dragged himself out of bed to do actual life-related things. He called Carmen, he organized his schedule for the week, and he even threw a load of laundry in.

 

To his delight, Steve actually showed up to a few of Sam’s groups that week on time. He still didn’t talk, but he sat a little closer to the front and seemed to be making more of an effort to pay attention. Sam even convinced him to start running a few times a week again. Steve did some speeches at elementary schools, and showed up at a few fundraisers for various diseases. He smiled for the cameras, and even came to Sam’s niece’s birthday party dressed in his full costume.

Despite all appearances, though, Steve was definitely not… better. Not be any means of the word.

Days would go by without Sam hearing a word from him. He’d eventually go over to Steve’s house to find him buried in paperwork or on his laptop again, his eyes tired and his skin pale.

There was nothing more that Sam could really do. Steve was just... stuck, in a sense. He couldn’t and wouldn’t move on with Barnes still running loose, and there was nothing any of them could do about that. Time and Barnes himself was the only thing that would change that, and until then, they were stuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I didn't update this for like a week and then all I gave you guys was this lil chapter. I am so sorry  
> *jean ralphio voice* I'm the wooOoOoOrrrRRRSSTTTT


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lil change in POV here. Steve's turn now!

Steve’s feet pounded against the wet pavement as he ran.

It was early in the morning, enough so that there weren’t really that many people around. The sky was grey and heavily cloudy, a light rain dampening the sidewalks and pathways.

Steve had already been running for hours, and he’d probably end up going for another few.

He sped up as the pavement stretched out in front of him. His heart pounded in his ears, and his lungs expanded easily.

He went faster, feeling his muscles start to burn. He was sprinting now, and his heart and lungs started to complain.

Steve kept going.

His legs started to protest, and he ignored it. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to speed up. Pressure started to grow in his chest, and his lungs started to feel uncomfortably restricted. He ignored it. If he ran faster, if he just kept going, maybe he could push this feeling out of his lungs -

He made it three more minutes at that pace before he had to stop. He slowed to a halt, bracing his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath. His heart thudded wildly, his muscles trembling.

Steve slowly straightened up, turning his face up to the sky. The rain brushed against his skin and clouded his eyes.

It hadn’t helped. It never did. He could still feel it, that heavy cold weight that wrapped itself around his heart and sank deep into his lungs. Didn’t matter how hard he ran, it still made its way through his bones and his tendons until it was all he could feel.

He supposed it could be called grief, although it didn’t really feel like it. He’d grieved before, and it wasn’t like this. He’d grieved when his father died, and when his mother had passed. He’d lost a few friends in childhood to illness and violence, and he’d lost more than a few during the war.

He hadn’t grieved when Bucky fell.

There hadn’t been time. There was the shock, at first, and then he just… couldn’t understand it. There’d been a few bad days, and then Hydra had reared its ugly head back up and he’d crashed that goddamn plane. Then they woke him up and told him that everyone he knew was dead and also that there were aliens falling from the sky.

There just hadn’t been time.

This… this was something more than grief. He couldn’t move on from it, couldn’t shake it. Everywhere he turned, he expected to see familiar faces and the streets that he knew. But they were gone, and he was never going to see them again. Everything was gone. All of his friends were dead, and it was all he could think about. But Bucky was here, Bucky was still somehow fucking here, and Steve carried that around with him like a light in a dark room.

It was selfish, he knew. Bucky had suffered atrocities that no one should ever have to endure, especially not for as long as Bucky had. It was selfish for Steve to want him around, to want him to come back. To come home. Bucky was on his own now, as far as Steve could tell. It was so fucking selfish of Steve to track him like this, to spend his days thinking and planning of how to get Bucky to come back to him. Bucky deserved to do whatever he wanted to do, and here Steve was, running his body into the ground in an attempt to get rid of the sorrow he felt in his absence.

Steve stared at the pavement in front of him and slowly started walking home. It gripped him harder then, now that his muscles were burnt out and his heart had slowed. His thoughts slipped back into a repetitive litany of _I miss you I miss you I miss you_ and it stayed with him all the way back to his apartment.

He let himself into his building and got into the shower. The water ran over his shoulders and his back. He didn’t really feel it.

He got out of the shower. He toweled off and found some clothes lying on the floor that were probably clean enough. He put them on.

He got a glass of water and sat back down at his kitchen table. He opened up his laptop and started working, looking for any mention or sign of Bucky since he’d last checked (less than six hours ago). He was getting pretty good at the internet now, he thought. He was better than he used to be, anyway.

He looked at the clock at one point and realized that he’d missed the VA session that Sam wanted him to come to. That happened a lot.

He wandered around his silent apartment until he found his phone. He sent a quick text to Sam. If he didn’t, Sam would drop by later on some vague pretense.

There was one message from Natasha. It was just an indecipherable string of emojis, but it made him smile a little nonetheless. He picked a simple happy face and sent it back to her.

Then he went back to work.

Steve woke up some time later with his face on his keyboard. It was dark outside now, at least.

Steve figured he should probably eat at some point, which was something he was forgetting a lot these days.

There was nothing in his cupboard again, but he found a frozen pizza in the back of his freezer. He tossed it onto the oven and sat down at his table again.

He stared at the wall for a few minutes, and then grabbed one of the file folders stacked next to his computer.

He took his pizza out of the oven and ate it while flipping through the file. Unfortunately, he’d picked the one that contained the instructions on how to reset ‘The Asset’ if something were to go wrong.

The pizza started to taste awful in his mouth. He put the rest of it in the fridge and went to bed.

 

Steve woke up. He went for a run. He came home. He read Bucky’s files. He went back to sleep.

Steve woke up. He went for a run. He stopped for coffee, but then came home. He read Bucky’s files. He went back to sleep.

Steve woke up. The weather was too bad to go running, so he didn’t bother getting out of bed that day.

Steve woke up. He went for a run. He came home. He went to the VA but left before Sam could get a hold of him. He came home. He read Bucky’s files. He went to bed.

Steve woke up. He went for a run. He came home. He read Bucky’s files. He went back to sleep.

Steve woke up. He went for a run. He came home, showered, and put on a suit. He got into the car that was waiting for him outside his building and closed his eyes as it took him to the event.

Pepper grabbed his arm as soon as he came inside. Tony was already there, talking loudly to a group of men in suits. Pepper pulled Steve around the room, introducing him to various people whose faces blurred in front of his eyes. He smiled for the cameras and signed a few autographs. He hated these events, the ones that Tony called ‘the good press’ events. There were always people there who would go on rants to Steve about the Avengers. Who gave them the right to do the things they do? Who made them God? Why did they get off on destroying half of the nation’s major cities?

Steve usually gave them the same spiel that Pepper had written for all of them, but he wasn’t in the mood. When a man came up to him and started to yell about how his apartment building had been destroyed in the Battle of New York, Steve frowned sympathetically and leaned forward.

“Huh,” he said, in his best Captain America voice. “Guess we should have left you to be eaten by aliens, then.”

The man gasped, and Pepper appeared at Steve’s side and hustled him away. He got back into the waiting car and went home. He went to sleep.

He woke up. He went for a run. He read Bucky’s files. He went back to bed.

He screamed into his pillows, trying not to disturb his neighbours. He slammed his hands against the walls of his shower until both his hands and the tiles were broken. He smashed laptop after laptop against the floor, and then dragged himself out to get another one. He pulled at his hair until fistfuls of it came out in his hands.

Steve woke up. He went for a run. He read Bucky’s files. He went to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW I haven't updated this in ages. that's. that's my bad. that's 100% my bad. also, there's only one more chapter to go and then we're caught up with It's Easier, It's Kinder!


	9. Chapter 9

Steve slumped down into the seat of the car, his neat suit starting to wrinkle. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

“It’ll be fun!” Sam said cheerfully. He’d already had two glass of champagne.

Steve groaned. “I already told Pepper I wasn’t going.”

“Yeah, but you saw how happy she was when you changed your mind at the last minute.”

“I didn’t change my mind,” Steve grumbled. “You changed it for me.”

Sam shrugged. “Come on, you’ll have a good time. Just do your rounds, talk to all the people that Pepper wants you to meet, and then come find me and Barton.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “The last time you guys played one of your drinking games, I had to carry both of you home.”

“What else are supersoldiers good for?” Sam asked innocently.

Steve sighed and shook his head. He stared out the window as the streets flew by outside.

They were at the hotel before Steve knew it. Pepper appeared by his side the moment he stepped out of the car, pulling him away from Sam and into the crowd. She talked quickly into his ear as people appeared in front of him, holding out their hands and smiling brightly.

Steve smiled politely and said what Pepper told him to say. He shook everyone’s hands, not even wincing at the sweatiness of some and the dryness of others. He occasionally glanced around, but Sam was off at the bar with Clint again. Natasha was with them too, and she shot him a pitying look as Pepper dragged him off again.

A roar from outside let Steve know that Tony had arrived. Pepper finally ducked away from Steve to enter at Tony’s side, smiling and waving to the crowd. Steve let himself fade back into the loud bustle of people, wandering around aimlessly. He didn’t actually know what this event was for. He hoped it was for charity, at least, but it was probably just another one of Tony’s parties.

Whatever. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like Steve had had plans for today, anyway.

Steve managed to wander around by himself for a while before he found himself standing at the bar next to Natasha. Clint had his arm around her waist, and Sam was leaning against the bar next to him.

They were all arguing playfully about something, although Natasha reached over and squeezed his arm by way of greeting. He smiled weakly at her and listened to them talk, the words going over his head like a foreign language.

Before he knew it, Pepper was waving him over. Steve sighed and started making his way through the crowd again.

“Cap!” Tony said eagerly when he reached them. He clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I’ve got someone who wants to meet you.”

Steve smiled politely at the man standing in front of him and fought the urge to shrug Tony’s hand off his shoulder. He shifted slightly closer to Pepper instead.

“Royce Linwood,” the man said, extending his hand. Steve shook it, keeping the smile plastered on his face.

“Steve Rogers,” he replied. “Nice to meet you.”

Linwood opened his mouth to speak, and then his eyes went blank as a bullet went straight through his skull.

Steve moved on instinct. He grabbed Pepper and tucked her under one arm, dragging her to the ground as he knelt. He reached for Tony’s sleeve and pulled him down too.

The bullet that would have hit Tony in the head grazed his arm instead. Pepper screamed, but her voice was lost in the tumult of people staring to panic.

Steve scrambled forward, dragging Pepper with him. His thoughts were quiet and unbothered by the chaos now erupting around them. He didn’t really mind that he was completely exposed to whoever was shooting at them, with the way that he was protecting Pepper like this. It didn’t matter.

Tony had disappeared somewhere, presumably to get his suit. Steve got Pepper to the relative safety of a doorway and then ducked back inside, ignoring the sound of her shouting after him.

He helped an elderly woman to her feet and got her out of the room, too. He went back in one more time to help a mother drag her terrified group of kids out, all of them screaming and clinging to Steve.

It didn’t seem like anyone else had been shot. Steve didn’t bother going after the shooter. Nat and Clint and Sam would take care of it, and Tony would help once he got his suit going. Hell, Pepper probably already had a detailed plan in place for this situation.

Steve stayed with the kids for a little while, letting them cling to his neck while their mother calmed them down. He wandered away once they let him go, looking for something else to do.

His phone rang.

“Nat?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“Get back to the tower,” she said breathlessly.

Steve frowned. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine. Just – “

“You sound like you’re hurt,” Steve said.

“I’m _fine,”_ Natasha said impatiently. “Meet us back at the tower as soon as you can.”

“Okay,” Steve said listlessly. “Is the situation under control? Do you need any help?”

There was a pause.

“Steve,” Natasha repeated. “Meet us at the tower.”

“Why?” Steve asked, a little impatiently. “Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

Natasha sighed. “We’ve got him, Steve.”

Steve’s blood went cold.

“He’s alive, we’ve got him restrained and sedated. We need to get him some place safe as soon as possible, Tony said we can bring him to the tower. Meet us there.”

Steve shoved his phone in his pocket and ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter was short and probably a little anticlimactic considering how long I left you all hanging for. MY BAD, it's the end of term and I have exams and essays and it's chaos BUT STILL. My bad. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this lil prequel and I'll get around to the sequel hopefully pretty soon! As much as I'd love to make this prequel even longer, I'd probably get sucked into it again and end up doing the entire thing from Steve's POV. I HAVE TO QUIT WHILE I'M AHEAD.
> 
> Thank you guys for all the amazing comments and kudos :) They 100% make my day.
> 
> I'm on tumblr [here](http://cameronwolfe.tumblr.com)!


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